Items tagged with Gartner

The latest PC sales numbers and accompanying predictions from research firm Gartner show an unsurprising trend: tablet sales will continue to rise sharply at the expense of traditional desktops and notebooks. “While there will be some individuals who retain both a personal PC and a tablet...most will be satisfied with the experience they get from a tablet as their main computing device," said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. She further noted that many consumers will stop replacing their PCs, because they simply won’t be essential anymore. As you can see from the...Read more...

Waning demand for feature phones caused worldwide mobile handset sales to decline for the first time in three years, according to the latest data released by Gartner. Mobile phone sales totaled 1.75 billion units in 2012, down 1.7 percent from 2011, though smartphone sales picked up the slack with a record 207.7 million units sold in the fourth quarter of 2012, up 38.3 percent year-over-year. Gartner said the last time the mobile phone market constricted was in 2009. The research firm blamed the recent downturn on tough economic conditions, shifting consumer preferences (from feature phones to...Read more...

The way Gartner sees it, we're all going to be living in single-PC homes in the not-too-distant future. Mom, pop, little Billy and his sister Janet won't have their own PCs anymore, and will instead share a single primary PC in the household for heavy lifting, and use a tablet for content consumption chores, like surfing the web and playing casual games. This shift that's taking place means that secondary PCs are fast becoming relics; once they're too old to be useful anymore, they'll just die out and be replaced by a tablet. The market research firm believes this is already taking place, noting...Read more...

Global semiconductor revenue saw a downswing in 2012 compared to one year prior, dropping 3 percent to $298 billion, according to preliminary results by market research firm Gartner. The top 25 players were collectively hit the hardest, as their revenue dropped 4.2 percent, surpassing the industry average and accounting for a smaller portion of the industry's total revenue. "Uncertainty about the state of the macroeconomy, coupled with ongoing inventory overhang, sent ripples through the semiconductor industry," said Steve Ohr, research director at Gartner. "The hardest hit areas include the PC...Read more...

Underscoring the explosive growth of mobile devices, research firm Gartner predicts that Google's Android install-base will eclipse that of Microsoft's Windows platform within the next four years. By the end of 2016, Gartner says there will be 2.3 billion PCs, tablets, and smartphones all running Android, enough to edge out the 2.28 billion Windows devices. It's no secret that PC sales have been in a slump, and as computer shipments stagnant, so too does Windows. However, Microsoft's banking on a big reception for Windows 8, not just on the desktop, but in the mobile sector as well. With so much...Read more...

Though PC sales have stagnated as of late, worldwide IT spending is in great shape and forecast to surpass $3.7 trillion in 2013, according to the crystal ball readers employed by Gartner. That would represent a 3.8 percent bump from projected spending of $3.6 trillion in 2012, but what's even more telling is the amount of IT jobs opening up. "By 2015, 4.4 million IT jobs globally will be created to support big data, generating 1.9 million IT jobs in the United States," said Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president at Gartner and global head of Research. "In addition, every big data-related role...Read more...

Add this to HP’s long list of woes: the world’s No. 1 computer maker – isn’t. According to research firm Gartner, HP ceded the top spot to Lenovo (if only barely) in recent months. HP is still tops in the eyes of other research firms, but Lenovo is threatening its lead there, too. HP’s drop from the No. 1 position in Gartner’s PC maker list is its first since 2006. Gartner bases its assessment on the company’s third-quarter shipments, which put HP with a global market share of 15.5 percent. Lenovo now has the top spot at 15.7 percent. Another research...Read more...

We’ve all seen our share of bogus social media activity, be it fake likes, ratings, or reviews, that are paid for by a company trying to goose its sales or generate buzz about some product. According to research firm Gartner, the amount of that bogus activity will account for 10-15% of all social media activity by 2014. To be clear, the problem is not that companies are sponsoring content; that’s been a common practice for a long time in a variety of media, and as long as there are appropriate disclosures, there’s no problem. The issue with this kind of covert marketing is that...Read more...

The best things in life may not always be free, but free goods (and services) sure are the least expensive, are they not? Naysayers will counter with the idiom, 'You get what you pay for,' and to them I would say, 'Poppycock!' I'm a mobile app user, and if you are too, chances are you downloaded more free apps than paid ones so far in 2012. I can back my assumption up with new data by Gartner, which reports that free apps have accounted for 89 percent of the total downloads so far in 2012. That means nearly 9 out of every 10 apps downloaded didn't cost the user a dime, or even a wooden nickel....Read more...

Market research firm Gartner says worldwide mobile phone sales dropped 2.3 percent year-over-year to 419 million units in the second quarter of 2012, noting a "challenging economic environment" and postponed upgrades as the main reasons for the drop in demand. In terms of the latter, Apple was hit especially hard as mobile users anticipate the launch of the iPhone 5 in another month or so. "High-profile smartphone launches from key manufacturers such as the anticipated Apple iPhone 5, along with Chinese manufacturers pushing 3G and preparing for major device launches in the second half of 2012,...Read more...

Research firm Gartner isn't saying the sky is falling on the PC industry, but it does note that worldwide PC shipments totaled just 87.5 million units in the second quarter of 2012, representing a decline of 0.1 percent from one year prior. Perhaps even more telling is the fact that Q2 marked the seventh consecutive quarter of flat to-single-digit growth. "Uncertainties in the economy in various regions, as well as consumer’s low interest in PC purchases, were some of the key influencers of slow PC shipment growth," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. "Despite the high expectations...Read more...

Three months ago, Gartner was predicting that worldwide PC shipments would reach 368 million units by the end of the year (not including tablet PCs), and more than 400 million in 2013. That projection worked out to a 4.4 percent growth rate in 2012. And now? According to GeekWire, Gartner is lowering its projected growth rate to just 0.9 percent for the year, a downward adjustment of 3.5 percent. Gartner hasn't made its new projection public yet, but GeekWire claims that a Wall Street analyst has seen the new numbers and posted them in a note to investors over the weekend. Image Source: Flickr...Read more...

Senior vice president and head of global research at Gartner Peter Sondergaard revealed Gartner’s forecast for enterprise IT spending in 2012 at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo. The firm believes that enterprise IT spending worldwide will hit $2.7 trillion next year, which is up from $2.6 trillion in 2011--an increase of 3.9%. However, that increase represents a slowing down of the market; for 2011, Gartner expected an increase of 5.9%. Still, Sondergaard noted that enterprises will continue to invest in IT despite poor economic situations, because IT has become a primary driver of business growth....Read more...

Despite what PC fatalists would have you believe, there's still a market for desktop and notebook systems. Sure, the PC market isn't growing like gangbusters at the moment, but it is growing nonetheless. That's saying something when the whole world seems preoccupied with tablets, smartphones, handheld games systems, and other non-PC devices. The number crunchers over at Gartner tallied worldwide PC shipments at 91.8 million units for the third quarter of 2011, which represents a 3.2 percent increase from the same quarter one year ago. That wasn't quite up to Gartner's expectations, which predicted...Read more...